Take a walk through any elementary school, and you're likely to see students diligently working at their seats or in groups. Sounds reasonable, right? Upon closer examination, however, you'll see students tackling problems and subject matter that used to be reserved for older students.
You see, instruction and complimentary activities were once governed by the concept of developmental appropriateness. In other words, concepts and activities were planned to meet the developmental readiness of students. For example, Kindergarten students were introduced to letters and their sounds, numbers and their corresponding object sets, and time was set aside for activities encouraging the development of emotional intelligence and interpersonal relationship skills.
Take a walk through a Kindergarten class now, and you'll see students at desks working on phonics practice, small groups where reading instruction is conducted, and no time for play is included. In fact, these students are expected to be reading fluently at a predetermined level. Further, their number sense is also expected to be advanced, including addition and subtraction concepts.
This is not just a Kindergarten problem, however. Visit any grade level and you'll see students analyzing complex texts, solving math problems that require higher order thinking skills, and working on writing assignments that are expected to exhibit an incredible amount of complexity. These elements can be seen in grades as low as second.
All of this is done in the name of rigor...that if we push the bar higher and higher, we'll see better results. There's just one problem with this thinking. Students are not ready, developmentally, to tackle such complex concepts and required applications.
There are two main theoretical problems with education as it stands now. First, Jean Piaget was very clear in categorizing age groups according to their cognitive capabilities. Seven to nine year olds, for example are not cognitively ready to analyze a complex text like those given on the STAAR test. Another example is Bloom's hierarchy of cognitive abilities. Imagine a triangle divided into sections. At the bottom, there are spaces for knowledge and comprehension. Knowledge means what you'd expect...the gaining of facts and successful regurgitation of those facts. This is the most basic level of thinking. Comprehension involves the facts learned in the knowledge level and understanding how they work together. It is these two levels that used to comprise the instruction at the elementary level.
The other levels of Bloom's triangle include application (which can be integrated at the elementary level), analysis, synthesis, and evaluation...all of which are skills that should be introduced in high school and honed in college...period. Forcing our younger students to perform at these levels is not only grossly developmentally inappropriate, but it leads to undue stress, feelings of inadequacy even among our brightest students, and forces teachers to go against everything they were taught about cognitive development.
The solution? Return to curricula that is geared for the cognitive and developmental levels of the students. If we must continue to participate in standardized testing, those tests must also reflect the appropriate level for each group of students being tested.
I know I've said quite a bit, but I'm hoping my fellow teachers will share this post, write their legislators, and be advocates for our students.
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